Tamara Pankova

Poltava State Agrarian Academy, Ukraine

REGIONAL STUDIES AT EL LESSONS AS A WAY TO MOTIVATE STUDENTS AND IMPROVE THEIR LANGUAGE SKILLS

I am a senior English language teacher at Poltava State Agrarian Academy. Our educational institution trains specialists for various branches of agriculture. At present, our Academy is a modern, many-profile scientific and educational complex; eight thousand students study here.

The Academy develops cooperation with agrarian universities, colleges, scientific establishments from other countries. Our professors, students participate in scientific conferences, study, undergo internship abroad, so the knowledge of foreign languages is very important for them. To be able to communicate with native language speakers, our teachers, post-graduate students and students are interested in studying and improving foreign language knowledge and skills. The majority of students (80%) study English. They have compulsory classes of General, Business English and ESP.

Our department of foreign languages (15 teachers altogether, 10 teachers of English among them) organizes scientific conferences, where students and post-graduates make presentations, based on their independent research. The presentations are made in foreign languages and then followed by discussion. Besides, students, post-graduates can also attend optional courses of foreign languages, where they study not only the language, but also different aspects, relating to political, economic systems, and culture of other countries.

But first of all, the students, as citizens of Ukraine, should know the history, culture of their own country, town, village.

It was my initiative to create a program to acquaint students with the history and culture of Poltava at EL lessons. The town has a very rich history and cultural life. The program started in 2009, the year rich in events – the 200^th anniversary of Nikolay Gogol’s birthday who, although writing in Russian, was born near Poltava and lived in the area during his childhood and youth, and the 300^th anniversary of the battle of Poltava (Russia’s victory over the Swedes). The program included classroom instructions, studies and guided bus tours to the sights. The tours were conducted in English and had two aims – regional studies and improving the skills of listening and speaking English. That year Poltava received many foreign tourists, so our students had the opportunity to communicate with native English language speakers.

Thus, in my work I do my best to combine all the latest achievements in methods of foreign language teaching and invent my own ways, which help my students to master English.

References:

1. Parkhomenko V.O. The Poltava Region Tourist. Guide-book. Poltava, 2012.

2. O. Stromecky. The How of Gogol. Lviv, 1994.